Quote:
Originally Posted by davidcappi
I guess sometimes I just get a little tired of people thinking every building in Hamilton is AmAzInG but it also has to do with my own bitterness and now generally jaded feeling towards the city.
I was pretty fortunate to get to visit a lot of places all over Ontario at my previous job and I got to see a lot of city cores and downtowns, and by comparison Hamilton has one of the most unimpressive remaining collections of historic buildings in the province. This isn't so much a criticism as it is an observation. I was amazed to see that places like Windsor and London had managed to hold on to more substantial buildings, including generally better modernist buildings during the 50s-70s boom.
Toronto and Hamilton in spite their differences share so many similarities when it comes to built form and urban geography that it's hard not to see the two as linked. Hamilton can learn a lot from Toronto when it comes to policy, planning, and especially architectural conservation, but it's unlikely that will happen until the (contagious) bitterness and desperation for an identity figures itself out.
So until then I'm gonna continue to draw parallels based on the way I experience Hamilton and I'm sorry if that makes some people feel insecure.
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Lets not forget that pretty much all of original downtown hamilton originally burned down, so any buildings before the stone era which came after are pretty much gone forever with only a few exceptions, and even a lot of those stone buildings burned as well leaving only shells - some of our most impressive structures fell victim to fire, and some still do.
That being said yes a lot of old buildings were also demolished because people don't know what to do with them back then - they were too expensive to conserve and so it was just easier to knock them all down. Companies also outgrew them - they needed more space - like the bank building on the corner of king and james. It originally had a few more floors added, and then was just demolished entirely after the merger and made a lot bigger and more modern.
Upon saying that however the 30 year neglect of downtown probably actually did it more good than harm because the sense of conservation we have now didn't exist in the 80s lets say and so a lot of our downtown older buildings woulda have been lost in that modernist craze that claimed so many downtowns older buildings during that time.
And I hear ya - there are a lot of beautiful buildings in other downtowns all across the continent - I probably have them all mentally documented of where every single one of them was in our city - hell the monstrosity that is jackson square took out a good few city blocks in and of itself!
Toronto generally built everything bigger and taller, and they had a bigger city footprint to work with. Thus torontos buildings tend to look a bit more impressive, esp. with all the condos on top of them with the facades integrated into the first few floors - I will give it that.
And yeah I can certainly understand the jaded feeling concerning hamilton - I was jaded too growing up, feeling frustrated that everything was boarded up and rotting and really wanting hamilton to DO something with itself, and now it is, but it's not always so black and white. Change happens but it happens slowly. I'd rather see slow change then really bad decisions imo.
I really do hope that hamilton finally does find an identity, because it desperately needs one now that its steel identity has collapsed. Don't want to see it become toronto, but also don't want to see it become detroit.
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